Duplicate Content Penalty, the Content Mix Strategy and the SAW Strategy that cuts through search engine keyword competition

Q: Hi Tom, the new content site I am setting up to promote your Burn The Fat e-book provides general fitness, diet and health information so any content you can provide me that falls into these areas would be greatly welcomed. However, I’m always slightly reticent about using content available for others to publish because of the possible search engine duplicate content issues. I was wondering, what are your thoughts on duplicate content penalties? I was also wondering whether there is any chance for me to publish any articles prior to others. If so, that would be an absolutely huge benefit. I'm looking forward to building up my new fitness site and hopefully bringing you more sales as a result! 

A: We’ve been doing a lot of testing and monitoring on this duplicate content issue because we have been getting conflicting information on this for years. Not all of the information we were told by the “internet marketing gurus” jives with what we’ve seen in the search engine results that come as a result of publishing our syndicated (re-printable) content. In fact, after reading this brief explanation, you’ll see how our own Google Search results completely put most duplicate content concerns at ease.

Some "gurus" say you need to publish 100% original articles while others say the whole content penalty is a non-issue. Personally, we believe a duplicate content penalty exists, but it is very misunderstood as it relates to the use of syndicated articles. Although I am not a search engine guru, I don’t believe that the replication of articles has a negative penalty in the way most people think of a "penalty." The question you must answer is whether you will get indexed in the search engine results, and if so, where in the rankings.

Keep in mind, the entire internet is built on syndication. What about RSS feeds? What about press releases? What about stories from news wires? Does Google ban sites that feed Amazon’s product listings through RSS? Does Google penalize news websites that publish syndicated stories? And here’s the big one for you: Why don’t sites like ezine articles dot com get penalized? They are 100% syndicated content, yet they have a PR 6 and Google loves them.

The web itself is a syndication tool so I don’t see how the search engines could possibly penalize every piece of syndicated content, so long as the website itself is significantly unique and the content is used in a way that benefits the reader and the search engine results improve the user’s experience.

On the other hand, if you publish poor content that’s not valuable for human visitors or if you try to “trick” the search engines, then I have to predict that will either fail to work at all or backfire on you in the long term. I think the real penalty comes into place with totally mirrored sites (identical sites with different URL/domain name in which case one will NOT get indexed and perhaps both get penalized), and also possibly with duplicate content on the same domain (same article twice etc.), or anything else that is an attempt to fool the search engines or which might "confuse" the search engine about which page to index.

What we have found is that article marketing has been our single most powerful and most money making strategy with the exception of e-mail marketing. In fact, when you combine email marketing with article marketing the results can be mind blowing.

Re-publishing quality articles can help increase your sales. How well an article helps you create sales depends a lot on the quality of the article and the ability of the article to get click-throughs. The article literally has to educate and sell at the same time, but primarily educate, help and even impress the reader, then sell the click-through to the sales page.

Here's the main point about intelligent use of syndicated content: You should mix up original and syndicated content. Generally it’s best not to depend entirely on syndicated content. Almost 100% of our top producing affiliates are using articles heavily. However they are not using my articles exclusively. They have a good mix of syndicated and original content. Usually at least 40-50% of the material on their sites is original. People who create a blog and just dump all our articles on that blog don’t do well because there is nothing creative or original on such a site.

Also, I think what so many people who are Google and SEO focused are forgetting is that we create sites for human beings, not just for search engines. Poor quality articles which were created purely for “SEO bait” have completely clogged up the article distribution directories as well as the Google index and now even Google has human eyes looking at web pages to determine quality of content. Believe me, Google does not want junk clogging up their index. They want to not only provide relevant results, but quality results because that’s what makes them number one at what they do.

It is really hard to find good articles in the mass-produced ezine article websites these days. It seems like you have to sort through 20 poorly written articles to find even one high quality article. This is one of the reasons we are providing you with an alternative source for content where you will always know the writing quality is high. The article marketing strategy only works maximally if the content you publish is quality content and it begs a click through to a sales page.

If you have a nice mix of your own original content, content from other authors as well as from me, you will have happy visitors that come back (a 'sticky site') and you may even find that your articles, if they are high enough in quality, will prompt people in forums, blogs, etc. to post one way links to your site for their friends to go "check out this article" (and one way links are as important as anything for SEO).

My examples above should have convinced you that you shouldn’t worry so much about publishing syndicated content. But if you’re still skeptical because some “guru” brainwashed you, then let me just leave you with some stats.

In a Google search for the weight loss related keywords used in one of our syndicated articles, the search engines produced these results:

That’s ONE of our articles indexed FIVE TIMES on the first page of Google, and this was just ONE keyword phrase! By the time you read this, these search engine rankings may have changed, but at any given time we can show you dozens of examples of this in real time. If duplicate content is always penalized, then how do you explain these search engine results?

Bottom line: You might be missing out on page one or even number one Google rankings if you have been afraid to republish syndicated content in your content mix, especially if you have an established site that Google already “likes.”

Now, I realize what question is going to come up next. Since we are revealing this to all our affiliates, then dozens of affiliates may be trying to get ranked on the same keywords for the same articles, therefore it will create competition for rankings on those keywords. Yes, this is a legitimate concern. However, there are two things you should know:

1. Remember that you should publish content for HUMAN eyes, not just for the search engines. You could easily use our syndicated content for landing pages which YOU drive traffic to with email or pay per click, thereby not depending on the search engines, which are notoriously undependable in the long term anyway. One algorithm change and your cherished number one spot could be gone, so you shouldn’t build your entire affiliate marketing business on one strategy, especially one over which you have no ultimate control. Drive or pay for some of your own traffic. Once you get that human eyeball on your page, then your goal is just to get the click-through to our sales page. Our articles help you do that.

2. There is a workaround strategy if you really want to play the SEO rankings game for syndicated articles. If you already have a content website and you would like to know the Syndicated Article Workaround (SAW) strategy, to cut through keyword competition, just email us and we will share it with you privately. (Serious affiliates with a content website only! We don’t hand this to you on a platter – you have to do a little work on your end. Write “SAW strategy” in the subject line and be sure to mention your full name and site URL)

Last but not least, be sure you subscribe to our affiliate newsletter because we announce when new articles are added. It wouldn’t be fair to give any one affiliate advanced notice before everyone else, but if you are subscribed to the affiliate newsletter, you will find out the moment new content is uploaded to our affiliate area and you can get first mover’s advantage by grabbing it and uploading it to your own site as quickly as possible.

If you have any other information or concerns about duplicate content issues or article marketing strategies, email us anytime using the contact us form. For priority response time, write “affiliate question” in the subject line.

Sincerely,

- Tom Venuto, Author & Affiliate Manager,
Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle

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